Legend
by Juxtaposie
Summary: Centuries later, these are the stories they will tell. 3 of 5: “I’ll carry you,” he tells her simply, and he reaches for her.
1. The Warrior

**Legend: The Warrior**

_She rises for the waterbenders, but it is for him alone that she shines. 1 of 5.  
_

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They'll say he was invincible, centuries later: that when night fell he was unstoppable and untouchable. They'll say that he was immortal. There will be stories of how he alone turned entire battles in his favor, of the enemies he had slain and the dear friends he had made and lost; tales of the family he had fought to protect, even at the cost of his own life – two sisters, a brother, a wife, innumerable children.

Mothers will tuck their children in to bed, and when the little voices chorus for a story – the boys for adventure and the girls for love – this is what mothers will say:

_Long ago, there was a boy. He was like any other boy, except for this: he was a close Companion of the Last Airbender, the greatest of all Avatars. _

At this point, the children will make appreciative noises. They have all heard tales of the Companions: the last waterbender of the southern tribe, the blind earthbender, and the Fire Nation prince – and the one who could not touch the elements: the warrior.

_This boy_, the mother will continue_, traveled many miles with the Avatar, and faced many dangers. He saw many places, and he met many people who would become dear to him in time: but none were ever so dear as the Northern Princess_.

_He loved her_, the voice will whisper. _He loved her as freely and purely as only the young can love, and she, poor soul, returned his affections. She gave her heart willingly, but the life she had was not hers to keep or to do with what she desired. She owed the moon spirit a great debt, and when he called to her in his time of crisis she could do nothing but answer. She gave her mortal life that the moon would rise again, and left the world of the living to take to the skies. _

_But her heart stayed with the boy, and he never forgot the pain of her loss. She knew her passing would cause him grief, but she was impossibly selfless and would not forsake the world for her own desires – or for his; so because she could not be with him, she watched._

_She watched him grow into a young man: handsome, and tall. She watched him weep over his first kill, and she watched him harden with every life he took. She watched over his wedding night, and lamented that it was not she that he had wed. She watched as his firstborn was brought into the world, and smiled that he could be happy. She watched as his children grew and he lost his friends – to war, and sickness, and time. She would be watching many years later when he passed into the next life. She watched every moment she could._

_But never did she watch so closely as when he went into battle. _

_He had made many enemies in his fight against the Tyrant Ozai, and there were soldiers aplenty who dreamed of being the man that would finally strike him down – but not a one of them dared to face him in the darkness._

_They tried to catch him in the sunlight: tried again and again, but it seemed the deed simply couldn't be done. He hid from the day, in deep forests and tall grasses, and small armies were able to hide with him. Night fell faster and stayed longer when he needed it to, and no enemy was brave enough to face him in the moonlight. They feared his indestructibility, his inhumanity: he took no prisoners and swept across entire battlefields with his men ever at his back. There was an eerie quality in the way he moved – too fast to be human – and something supernatural in the light that glittered off the steel and bone in his weapons. He was too lucky to be real, his plans too chaotic and unorganized to prevail. The moon's rays were never brighter than when they lit up the field on which he waged war. They showed him where to step and how to move, and blinded his foe like noonday sun._

_And when he was done he would look up to the moon to see the face of his Princess, and he would know she had protected him and guided him, just as he had tried to do for her all those long years ago._

This is the story mothers will tell, when their children ask about the Warrior and the Moon. _She rises for the waterbenders_, they'll say in voices tight with emotion, _but it is for him alone that she shines._

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AN: I was reading some myths (mostly Greek, and Celtic) and this is what happened. And I still can't get the break bar to work..._  
_


	2. The Waterbender

**Legend: The Waterbender**_  
_

_She cups her hands against the wall, gathering water to drink: it's sweet and cold on her tongue. _

* * *

She runs as fast as her shaking legs can carry her, past whipping branches and scratching brambles that snag her skirts and leave angry welts on her ankles. She stumbles, but refuses to fall, and presses onward with all the strength she has left. A terrible, familiar ache is growing at the base of her spine: she knows this ache, has felt it once before, and no longer fears the pain that will soon follow if she doesn't stop the undue stress of running - but she is far more afraid of the humans who are chasing her than the one who resides in her body. She carries him with an arm wrapped tight around her swollen middle, holding her cloak against her clammy skin.

As she meets the steep incline of the mountain's slope, she begins to pray.

_They've killed my husband for defending his home_…

She breaks through the tree line with only a moment's hesitation. Her hands reach out to grasp the sharp stones that rise before her, far up into the clouds. There is no path here, and the way is steep, but she is strong and determined.

_They've taken my son to fight their war…_

She finds a foothold, and lifts herself up amidst the roaring winds and craggy rocks. Her cloak flaps wildly around her legs, and her hood falls back. The scarf in her hair comes loose, and she dares not let go of the stone face to grab it, even if it will tell them she has passed this way.

_My brothers are dead, and my sister is a soldier's whore…_

With luck, the wind will carry the scarf away. The ground is far below, and the mountain still looms above her. She pushes onward far past dark, and then cannot tell if she is farther from the ground or the mountain's peak. Her arms tremble with the strain of pulling her weight, her feet begin to slip, but she will not let herself fall. She pushes onward, and soon the child begins to push too.

_But I am alive. **We** are alive! And I don't mean to end my life running like some coward, or have his ended before it has begun…_

She can feel herself slowing, the harder the child pushes. It is all she can do to grope her way over the rocks now. Her hands are slippery with what can only be blood, and the wind has turned her legs to ice. She knows she will need to stop soon: the baby cannot wait much longer. There is a patch of deeper darkness just above her; a crevice perhaps, or maybe a cave. Far below her a dog begins to howl and the answering cries are too many for her to count. Either they've found her, or there are wolves in the mountains. She's not sure which she would prefer.

_I don't know if you hear me, or if you even care to listen anymore…_

This cave is old: she can feel it in the rock. She doesn't know what bending is, or that many years ago – too many to count – her ancestors were able to touch and feel and move the rocks as easily as their own bodies. The stone is smooth and warm beneath her hand. Far ahead there is moonlight, and she hears the trickling of water.

_I don't know your name now. I think I did, once, a long time ago when I was little_…

Her palm leaves a red trail on the wall. She thinks she can hear shouting far, far away, outside the cave and miles down the mountain. She cares nothing for it. The cave arches like a passageway, and there is writing on the ceiling. A millennia ago it would have read, 'Despair, you who enter with violence in your minds and anger in your hearts. Peace dwells here, and healing is at hand.' She does not see any of these things.

_You're older than my god, and maybe you have more power…_

There is a room, brimming with the moonlight that was spilling out into the tunnel. The chamber is vast and lofty, the ceiling rising out of sight. The moonlight isn't moonlight, because there is no hole in the rock over her head, but she doesn't notice that either. Her eyes connect with those of the figure on the far side of the cavern, and that is where they stay. The woman who gazes back at her has a kind face.

_You can save me. I know it. You can help me save him…_

She cries out as the child moves, and stumbles forward. One arm reaches out for her, a hand offered in love and guidance; the other, the woman has wrapped around her middle, one hand clutching the opposite hip. The baby moves again, and again she stumbles, but she does not kneel until she is clutching the base of the statue in both wet hands.

_Help me_! _You have to help me. My God has abandoned me. I need you to find me!_

Her fingers find the writing at the statue's feet, but the words are strange, and foreign. Once, they read, 'We looked to you, and you looked to the light, and it was there that we walked.' She knows women have prayed here. She can feel it in the rock, just as she can feel the age: hundreds of women, perhaps up into the thousands, years and years ago. The earth was young then, and marks were easily made. The earth beneath her dips a little, from the weight of all the uttered prayers.

The beautiful face of the nameless woman – goddess, she thinks the statue must be a goddess- gazes warmly down at her. Water trickles down the cave walls. She knows there's not a river for miles.

Then she is overwhelmed by the pressure of clenching muscles and pushing infants. There, at the statue's base, under the watchful eyes of one long passed, she gives birth to her second son. She is scared, and alone, but she knows she will survive the fear, and the steady gaze of the statue eases the loneliness. She cleans herself and the babe as much as she can manage, then falls into an exhausted sleep with the infant wrapped tightly in her cloak, curled in her arms.

When she awakes, it is light. Sun shines down through the tunnel, into the cavern, glinting off the slick rock and illuminating the statue's face. The woman seems to smile in the sunlight. She cups her hands against the wall, gathering water to drink: it's sweet and cold on her tongue. She feels as though she's just eaten.

When she's fed her son, and swaddled him again with her cloak, she trudges down the tunnel to the cave's entrance. Her scarf has snagged on the sharp rocks beside the tunnel, and flaps wildly in the breeze. Her baby blinks in the sunlight.

* * *

AN: So after many weeks of waiting, here is the second installment. I'm fairly pleased with the tone. I can't wait for all the questions I'm going to get for this one. Yes, I realize it's a cave. But it's a cave high up in the mountains. Do your own imagining. I know what went on, and I think you can figure it out too... And to clarify, this takes place much, much later than the first chapter.


	3. The Last Airbender

**Legend: The Last Airbender (Part I)**

_"I'll carry you," he tells her simply, and he reaches for her._

* * *

The Elder's great grandson is almost sixteen when he first hears the whispers of the betrayal suffered by the Last Airbender. He has heard the stories for as long as he can remember; knows them all, word for word, by the time he's ten – but he is never able to forget the sad, faraway look in his father's eyes, or the shame that blooms in his heart in the instant he is made aware of the secret they keep. The Others, _liars, usurpers, destroyers_, don't know – cant' know: it's a secret, deep and dark like the old places of the earth – and honor – love, friendship, peace, and pride – demands it stays that way.

Not even his siblings, his cousins, his aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews, are allowed a glimpse. He is the first son of the first son. He will keep the truth of the Betrayal, and his broken heart will be the broken heart of the Last Airbender; the broken heart of the waterbender, the warrior, and the prince.

It happens in the fifth month of his twenty-second year, while spring is blossoming into summer. The fire is stifling in the warm evening air, and the smells of burning rosemary and hawthorn, eyebright and ginseng, pervade the smoky atmosphere of the hut. The tea is bitter on his tongue as it passes his lips, but the bed is cool and soft and his eyelids are fluttering even as he's being laid down by his father and grandfather, the Elder keeping watch with that same sad, familiar, faraway look.

When he awakens, long hours later, the sun is rising, and things are not as he remembers even though they are exactly as they're supposed to be. A woman is sleeping beside him. She is young, and beautiful, and the mother of the children he knows are sleeping in the next room. She is his wife, and even as his heart begins to burst with love for her and the family they have together, something is weighing it down. Suddenly, the sun is not quite so bright.

And he knows it's because _she_ is missing. She's been missing for three days, with not a scrap of cloth, a drop of blood, or a surviving soldier to tell her whereabouts. Everyone was already dead by the time he'd arrived, but none of the bodies had been hers, and that thought chills as much as it comforts.

His brother-in-law has been restless ever since, and the soldiers won't stop muttering to eachother: _It's hopeless…_

It _is_ hopeless, but it's been a long time since he's had any use for hope. Faith works just as well. On the fifth day, he kisses his wife goodbye – hugs his little girl, holds his infant son one last time – and he goes out searching himself.

He goes alone, despite everyone's protests: he's faster that way, and time is critical. She needs him, and he has never failed her before, but for all his speed he can feel her death keeping pace with him. He has to reach her before it does, because they're too much like the Fire Nation, these Others. They're too much like his drowned, distant memories of the Princess who once terrorized his dreams - cruel, callous, uncaring, unremorseful – and he knows that if he doesn't find her first, her end will not be quick.

He has to fight to get to her, and it's not as easy as it used to be. They are too willing to die and he is too hesitant to kill. When he finally finds her, past stone and steel and the wooden door that couldn't hold a grown man but is so terribly perfect for holding her, he's exhausted, and his fears are confirmed. She's broken.

Even his untrained eye can see that she'll never walk again. The mangled remains of her feet will never heal properly, not even with his wife's care, and one of her arms hangs limp. She's cradling it to her chest as she moves, struggling to turn her unseeing eyes toward the first living soul who's entered her prison in two days, moving not with anger or fear or any of her usual defiance, but with only a vague, listless curiosity. She hasn't even noticed the sounds outside.

"Toph," he chokes, his voice thick with tears to see her looking so small. He wonders if the woman who moved mountains is still alive somewhere in this little wooden room, because he doesn't see her in the broken remains of the girl curled up on the floor. He can't find his old friend, or his teacher, or the girl he's loved like a sister for as long as he's known her. He calls her name again, over and over, searching, praying she'll answer, but she keeps her silence until he lays a hand on her curiously unmarred face.

Recognition, strength, will, _hope_. All these things spread through her limbs like wildfire, branching out from the place where his fingertips rest against her temple, but the hope dies just as it's flaring into life.

"No," she groans, her voice anxious and raw, almost nonexistent. "No, Aang, what are you doing here?!"

He's smiling through his tears when he says, "I'm here for you. I'm taking you home."

"No," she says again, her voice gaining volume, and some semblance of its command. "I can't walk. You have to leave – now! You have to go-"

"I'll carry you," he tells her simply, and he reaches for her.

She's light in his arms, but she fights him, demanding – _begging_ – him to leave her, to get away, she's expendable, he has a family, what about Katara, his children, they need him, the world needs him-

And then she freezes, quiets, and the sound of his blood pounding in his ears is deafening. The air around them is thickening, its particles charging with some unseen energy that smells and tastes like lightning even though he knows it's anything but. There's something – _someone_; it's so hard to tell with Them – behind him. It's laughing.

Turning her crying face into his chest, Toph mumbles, "I'm sorry."

The air is heavy, hard, choking, and when the dark closes in, the Elder's great grandson wakes up.

* * *

AN: Convoluted? You bet. Confusing? Of course. Answers? Next chapter.

So... who thought I'd never update this again?


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